50 thoughts on “In case you haven’t seen it yet”

Ok, true story from the annals of medical school: we happen to just have completed a unit on the anatomy of the pelvis. This involves, as all anatomy does, looking at cadavers, and identifying structures on them. So on the afternoon in question, we’re all going down a list and identifying things like the internal pudendal artery, the sphincter urethrae…and the clitoris. For the vast majority of the female medical students, this last part took less than ten seconds. However some of their male classmates needed clarification.

“Is this the clitoris?” one asked, pointing at a specimen with a metal probe.

“Hem…you might want to look more anteriorly,” his colleague answered. “That’s the rectum.”

I ask out of idle interest only, not because I have a relative who is a surgeon and refers to his female colleagues as “lady surgeons,” and once chuckled and said “Well, I guess I’m probably a little sexist har har har.”

Seriously, I love these so much. And I’d not seen the older article before, either, but oh it is dead-on!!! Yes, isn’t it great how often white hetero cisgender temporarily-able-bodied economically-privileged supposedly-liberal dudes know *EXACTLY* how to fix everyone else’s experiences of oppression? I mean, thank God they take up so much conversational space and hog so much leadership in so-called peace-and-justice circles; otherwise I’m sure things would be so much worse. In fact, they’d have totally eradicated all oppression by now, except that they’re also very busy focusing on the Issues That Matter.

“We should be encouraging an open dialogue with our young women, one that isn’t constrained by some outdated facade of 1950s morality,” Lazoff said to a crowd of people looking down at their shoes.

Heh.

We had a discussion in my gender comm class about the “c word” and how much it freaked the students out to the point where none of them would say it aloud. Until I took them through the steps to stop and think about what it really means, that the worst possible thing to call a woman is a part of her anatomy. *sigh*

A Sarah, it used to be that you could input a dummy “from” address (ie anony@anonmail.net) and it would take it. I don’t know if that’s changed.
I TA’ed (essentially, though we had another title) women’s studies 101 one year, and one of the dudes in my group was made so uncomfortable by a guest speaker who talked about how radical it was when women were using speculums and mirror to see their cervixes (cervi? cervices? cervixum?) that he stood up in anger (to leave the class), and then passed out. When he woke up, he threatened to go to the dean for harassment and (I’m pretty sure) assault. To our credit, none of us laughed until we were behind closed doors. (And it wasn’t *really* funny until I met the dean, and heard her side of his complaint, where he’d asked for a male dean because “a woman wouldn’t understand” his trauma.)

Anita: What on earth made that guy take a Women Studies 101 course without expecting to hear about women’s bodies?? *boggle*

I was reading parts of this article to my husband last night. I don’t think he got it, but that might be because he’s not familiar with most of the euphamisms, not being a native English speaker. (seriously, I had to tell him what ‘tata cancer’ was.)

Oh man, Anita, I had one of those in my introductory courses. He sent a righteous email to the entire class, making an “official complaint” that
1.he studied X hours, so he should get Y high grade but didn’t, and thus it was the TAs problem with her grading system
2. that the TA swore too much and
3. that we watched the segment of Real Women Have Curves where all the women strip down to their underwear and it was “gratuious and offensive”.

This was also a guy who argued against Title 9 because somehow it takes away money from men who deserve it more. Needless to say many of us ripped him a new one, but men who are *all about their manpain!* make me want to punch things. Preferably them.

Oh, poor boys in women’s studies classes, having to hear about lady parts. How traumatic.

We had one of those in the intro level class I took many years ago. But he was balanced out by the frat guy who proudly proclaimed himself a feminist halfway through the semester, and would tell the other guy to just get the fuck over his privilege and listen. I kind of loved that guy.

Harriet: I never thought of using this article to get me through that… (I have to have one every six months. bleah. I was supposed to have one next week, but I postponed it because I had root canal this week and I have to try out a new primary doctor the week after next, and I’d like more than one week between torturous medical experiencs.

Thank God we women only ever have to read stuff in school that we can relate to as women, like Lord of the Flies.

I found Of Mice and Men to be the most wonderful in that regard, actually. Completely relatable, and the fact that the only fucking woman in the book didn’t even have a name and existed purely to get poor Lenny into trouble with her dangerous feminine wiles was AWESOME. The education system is definitely set up to favour women these days, the Daily Mail are right!

What on earth made that guy take a Women Studies 101 course without expecting to hear about women’s bodies?? *boggle*

Probably he was there to pick up chicks, like the freshman dude from my Women’s Lit class who used to wax moronic about how he was right and we were all wrong and the United States would never, ever have a woman President because the men Just Wouldn’t Allow It since women can’t be qualified for that kind of thing. Thank god that douchebag dropped out after about three days.

It takes a particularly stupid brand of person to think he can pick up chicks by spouting anti-feminist dogma in a feminist setting. (Probably the same brand of person who thinks he’ll be able to pick up girls at a lesbian dance…) You’d think he’d at least go undercover for a while before subtly trying to brainwash you all into being his sex kittens.

Bald Soprano, hope you don’t have too much residual misery from your root canal! I think one medical adventure in any given month is more than sufficient.

I can picture my upcoming checkup now – when my doctor (for whom I feel only lukewarm at best) says “slide down further, please” I say “of course, you must have your little looksie-doo!” and then I cackle so hard I roll right off the crinkly paper sheets.

emmy: “Oh, poor boys in women’s studies classes, having to hear about lady parts. How traumatic.”

I know! Thank God we women only ever have to read stuff in school that we can relate to as women, like Lord of the Flies.

I took a Spanish Literature in translation course (actual literature from Spain) where one book’s “protagonist” went on for ten pages with a ramble about how Spain was a whore and he wanted to rape her. Stuff every woman can identify with, I’m sure.

Then we read “The Same Sea as Every Summer”, which had a lesbian relationship in it. You would not believe the male whining that the class had to endure. Some of the men, I swear to gawd, where actually griping that they didn’t find the sex scenes hot, so the book had no merit.

I giggled at this article when I first read it, and shared it with my mother. (Due to her hysterectomy, the totality of her lady parts has been reduced to a “vaginal vault,” which I always thought was a very strange way of referring to it. Makes it sound like it should be some sort of echoing chamber, or perhaps a very secure place to store things.)

But I took a good look at that graphic, and the poor thing pictured has more wrong with her than society’s ignorance about her reproductive system. Her right femur appears to be directly attached to her vagina, while her left one seems to be serving as some sort of drainage system for her colon. She could poop through her foot, maybe. Unless those aren’t bones at all, in which case I’m really stumped.

Man I love the Onion. And this is a key example why.
I must say that I feel very lucky to have had the studentd I did for a class on gender. Their main complaint was that an article on sex zones wasn’t dirty enough. And there was lttle complaint about women pooping heroin balloons, nekkid men, or transgendered French boys. However, I did notice how clueless men are about how loud they are and how they randomly interrupt people. That was a total PITA for classroom management. But I loved all of the students.

“It takes a particularly stupid brand of person to think he can pick up chicks by spouting anti-feminist dogma in a feminist setting. (Probably the same brand of person who thinks he’ll be able to pick up girls at a lesbian dance…) You’d think he’d at least go undercover for a while before subtly trying to brainwash you all into being his sex kittens.”

I was in a senior seminar with a guy who felt the need to explain to us all why Freud was sexist, and that didn’t get him anywhere, either. Poor widdew menfolk. They just can’t win. (Well, except for having all the money and the power, but can that compensate for the eyerolling they must endure? Male reparations now!)

Anita, your story reminds me so much of the South Park that was on on Wednesday night. The guys find it HILARIOUS every time they fart, but when I woman laughs at her own queef (a bizarre yet fantastic word), the men enact a law to prevent all women from queefing because my god, it’s SO OFFENSIVE.

Hahahaha. Reminds me of sex ed where we had to name the parts of the genitals on a worksheet. I walked up to the teacher and asked something about the guy’s parts, and then right next to me a boy asked the teacher something about the girls parts. LoL, it was like mutal confusion over the opposite sex right there.

Fricking brilliant! I just had “down there surgery”, and you wouldn’t BELIEVE how ignorant and squeamish my husband (otherwise a remarkably with-it and non-sexist guy) was over technical words like ‘endometrium’. I offered to show him where said parts were on a diagram, but he was too weirded out do deal with that.